Character Education

For the last several years, all SASD schools have met together to create the Souderton Character Counts! Committee with hopes to better coordinate the character education efforts taking place across our district. Our goals are to: promote interaction between schools, embed character education into our ongoing programs, institute character initiatives for athletes, create monthly character themes to be addressed K-12, and help children set character goals for themselves.

We have established 8 themes for the year, 6 of which come directly from the Character Counts! pillars:

May & June - Wisdom, Humility
The essence of wisdom enables us to make reasoned decisions that are both good for us and for others. Humility is both recognizing our inadequacies and abilities and pressing our abilities into service without attracting attention or expecting applause.Character Counts Parent Edition on Wisdom and Humility (PDF)

Our committee decided to add the virtues of perseverance, wisdom and humility to the six pillars, believing that these character traits are critical for our students’ school and life success.

We recognize that our efforts to help grow children of character cannot be accomplished in a vacuum. We need parents to support and continue conversations at home with your child(ren). For parents at the elementary level, we have created parent pages that will be sent home monthly. We know that the role of schools is to help make kids smart and to make them good, but we depend on parents and other adults in our community to continue the work beyond the school day. Thank you for helping in this most important endeavor.

Character education helps schools create a safe, caring and inclusive learning environment for all students and supports academic development. It fosters qualities that will help students be successful as citizens, in the workplace, and with the academic curriculum. It lays the foundation to help students be successful in all of the goals we have for our schools. It is the common denominator that will help schools reach all of their goals. Character education is not one more thing on our plates, but rather the plate itself!

Our district logo has the tag line, “A community where character counts!” We believe that only as we all work together to build character in our children will we become a community with character. Thanks for helping make this vision a reality.